If you have a slight suspicion that a process is taking more CPU cycles than it should, or you're experiencing memory leaks that make entire gigabytes of RAM disappear, Windows Task Manager might not be enough for effective control. That's when tools like SysGauge come in, offering several monitoring resources and a system to export accumulated data in HTML or PDF format.
We love having an abundance of processing power, but we want efficient software. After all, wasting isn't using, and if a program enters a sort of cosmic delirium followed by a one-gigabyte RAM leak (or more), it's evident that the developer has much to correct. The center of my complaints on this topic are browsers. Chrome devours memory… and Firefox does too.
Recommendations to close tabs and uninstall extensions are as empty as always, because honestly I struggle to understand that a browser with four open tabs and a single extension needs 900 megabytes of RAM, and doesn't return a single byte. Under these conditions it's very important to closely monitor CPU and RAM usage, which brings us to SysGauge.
Process Monitoring
SysGauge's factory configuration presents information on processor usage combining all available cores, memory usage, disk space, disk activity along with its transfer speed, and finally the volume of data passing through network cards. On the left we can see a percentage counter, and on the right a very useful graph to detect activity spikes.
The rest of the integrated "counters" allow us to separate the information even further. Maybe you're interested in logging the usage of a specific core, the exact value of RAM in use, the behavior of a process, or the write activity on a certain storage unit. Adding and removing counters is simple, and they take effect immediately, without restarting the program.
Finally, SysGauge generates automatic or manual reports in various formats (with PDF and HTML at the forefront), as well as sending notifications via email. Another interesting option is saving data beyond the minimum of 24 hours. SysGauge can accumulate values for up to 90 days, more than enough to determine which are the problematic points of a computer and the software it runs. The program is free, with 32-bit and 64-bit builds. There is a paid Pro version that expands the capabilities as you can see in this comparison table.
